DONAHUE GOING OFF THE AIR, HELEN GURLEY BROWN LEAVING THE HELM AT COSMOPOLITAN--WILL GENDER EVER BE THE SAME?

ASKED TO DEFINE THE IDEALIZED WOMAN WHO HAS COME TO BE known as the Cosmo Girl, editor in chief Helen Gurley Brown once replied, "She has always been sexy, slender and bosomy." The latter adjective--so evocative of old-fashioned feminine allure, of torpedo bras and Pursettes, of Helen Gurley Brown herself (though she is actually wafer thin)--describes what is probably the Cosmo Girl's most famous attribute. "A beautiful bosom is a beautiful bosom," Brown elaborated. "If you don't have one, you look on with awe and envy."

That may have been true of the man who used to be America's premiere daytime...